Dec 02 2008
Precarity
Sent PhD program addresses to my recommenders last night. Naturally this is nervous-making. The whole process of applying to PhD programs is nervous-making. A terminal Master’s degree in my field makes a person virtually unemployable outside the museum world; if I leave academia now, I will be trained for the same jobs that I was getting before I went in for the MA degree. Doubly nervous-making is that I am working on my favorite paper right this second, the one that will be sent in as the writing sample. Have you ever written a seminar paper and thought, “That was quite good, except for the parts that were totally ludicrous and speculative – wonder what will come of that section”? In three weeks I’ll have to cut the ludicrous and speculative content from this six-month project, swallow hard and cast my scholarship into the pot to be judged. Should be good practice for the four conference abstracts I’m preparing next month. Isn’t my life exciting?
